We’re all busy creating art for our next exhibition

We’re currently creating new work for Airborne, an upcoming exhibition at Artē Collective.

Airborne invites viewers into moments of suspension and ascent: still summer skies, gliding wings, paper planes defying gravity, and forms that test gravity’s pull. Across painting, ceramics and sculpture, the exhibition explores flight as wonder, rebellion, biomimicry and the delicate tension between freedom and inevitability.

Working across our respective disciplines, each artist has considered the title and interpreted it to suit. Sophie Melville, Jenny Chisholm and Lizzie Carruthers are all painting, Sue Rutherford is making ceramics and both Briar Hardy-Hesson and Andi Regan are making sculptural pieces.

Together, as New Zealand artists based in Wānaka, we are exploring both the physical and metaphorical dimensions of flight: aspiration, fragility, tension, release and freedom. Some works may feel weightless and open; others acknowledge gravity’s steady insistence. Between them lies that charged space where lift becomes possible.

Please join us for the opening night party on Thursday March 26, 4pm-7pm. We look forward to sharing Airborne with you !

Collective Circles

How many scenes, scenarios, objects and characters can six artists magic up in a little more than a month? Artē Collective can manage just about 50!

Not long after our official gallery opening, the six Wānaka artists of Artē Collective in Luggate put our hands to work, producing a remarkable body of art for our very first group exhibition, ‘Collective Circles’.

Opening Friday 5 December at Artē Collective, the exhibition is a bold, summery showcase of 20mm round artworks spanning painting, ceramics and sculpture. What began as a simple idea, proved more demanding for much of the collective than expected; albeit a small surface, there is still a large amount of work involved due to tighter composition and necessity of detail.

With the gallery now fully operational and each of us taking turns on duty, much of the art has been created on-site. “Sharing our creative process with visitors has been a rewarding experience, offering an intimate glimpse into how each artwork comes to life. Some artworks sold in the gallery before the paint was dry, long before they even made it to opening night,” says sculpture artist Andi Regan.

The show highlights the breadth of the collective’s creativity: Lizzie Carruthers honours the birds that didn’t make the Bird of the Year podium whilst Andi Regan explores playful interpretations of the collective nouns for birds. Landscapes feature too with Jenny Chisholm’s soft, luminous skies and hills and Sophie Melville’s glimpses of our most beloved mountains. Figurative forms flourish with Briar Hardy-Hesson’s frolicking lake woman and juicy fruit bowls alongside Sue Rutherford’s ceramic wreath and contemporary still lifes.

 “Visitors can look forward to a vibrant group exhibition where the gallery walls burst with colour and life. Each artist has created a mini solo show. Starting from the same wooden circle, we have all taken our own creative path — resulting in a diverse yet harmonious collection.”

The exhibition runs through December and into January, with artworks sold directly off the wall — so don’t muck around! See these works while you can, before they’re gone.